ACT Medicare Local’s new chairman has welcomed the Abbott government’s backdown on a general practitioner co-payment, saying it would have impacted on Canberra’s vulnerable citizens.
Dr Martin Liedvogel has worked closely with the ACT’s needy for a long time, having worked as a general practitioner in the the territory for 10 years and is now the practice principal at Fisher Family Practice in Weston Creek.
Appointed as the new Medicare Local chairman in December, he said the ACT health system in general is very good, although there were always ways to enhance the system.
“I think one of the main frustrations that I experience is really communication, particularly between primary care and secondary care, that’s between the general practice and the hospital,” he said.
Dr Liedvogel said while health costs in the ACT were certain to rise due to an ageing population and an increase in chronic illness, better communication could assist in keeping them as low as possible.
“At the moment primary healthcare and secondary healthcare sit in separate silos almost – one is funded by the federal government, one is funded by the state government and that’s one of the reason why communication flow isn’t particularly good,” he said.
Dr Liedvogel said as an example if pharmacists were more closely incorporated into local general practitioners’ offices it would improve communication and patient outcomes.
“If a patient was to be admitted to hospital the pharmacist would be able to let the hospital know exactly what medications they were taking,” he said.
“Equally when they were discharged they will be able to be part of that handover process about exactly what medication the patient has been discharged with, what changes have been made.”
While Dr Liedvogel said he wanted to find more efficient ways to manage healthcare and save money, he was glad to see the back of the Abbott government’s GP co-payment.
“It’s really important to make sure that the vulnerable in the community have equity of access and the potential was there for that not to happen with that policy,” he said.
Through the ACT introduction of web-based information database HealthPathways for general practitioners in April, Dr Liedvogel said he hoped as many patients as possible could be kept out of hospital.
“Primary healthcare is the most responsive and most cost-effective part of our health system and I think it should be utilised and I think at time it probably is a little underutilised at the moment,” he said.